


A Brief History of the Vampirical Career of the Graf von Krolock and his Son

by meganphntmgrl



Category: Tanz der Vampire - Steinman/Kunze
Genre: 17th Century, Ableism, Ableist Language, Age Difference, Blood, Child Death, Depression, Family History, Family Secrets, Gen, Graphic Depicitions of Illness, Graphic Description of Corpses, Illnesses, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Miscarriage, Other, Period-Typical Ableism, Period-Typical Homophobia, References to Incest, Revenge, Suicide, Temporary Character Death, Vampire Family, Vampire Turning, Vampires, accidental murder, taking the lyric 'I've been waiting for you since you've been born' at absolute face value
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 11:30:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meganphntmgrl/pseuds/meganphntmgrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was always softer-hearted than he imagined himself in one way and one way only.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brief History of the Vampirical Career of the Graf von Krolock and his Son

**Author's Note:**

> This story originated as effectively a backstory infodump on a roleplaying board. Those tags up there are all there for a reason, so please tread with caution.
> 
> The germ of the idea for how Herbert was turned came from another fic I read years ago by BethWinter. I can't recall what it was titled, and it's not on her archive here, but I feel some credit was due even if this gradually and over several years of roleplaying twisted itself free and into something different. The idea of the Graf's name being Johannes might have been hers too, though I've seen it written thusly so many times in fandom that I'm not certain. (It was what my predecessor playing him on the board called him, too- for the record, I've decided that the much-referenced Breda von Krolock tombstone in the original _Fearless Vampire Killers_ film probably belongs to his _mother_.)
> 
> The Graf's general reaction to Herbert's state of mental health is pretty messed up and does not reflect my own position on mental illness of any kind.

It was common knowledge within certain circles of the undead that Johannes Krolock (as he now styled himself, seeing little need to utilize his admittedly well-maintained [through carefully applied under-the-table bribery of Eastern Bloc government officials] right to call himself _Graf von_ Krolock except on occasions where a bit of creative threatening was needed to grease certain wheels he preferred to have turning right on schedule) had long since lost his ability to love. This, like most common knowledge, was untrue.

Some tried to refute this by pointing out that Krolock had maintained a pretty little consort in the form of a doe-eyed perpetual seventeen-year-old for the last seventy-five years or so. This had to prove some level of devotion on his part, because the Princess Sarah (as she was occasionally called by lower levels of obsequious undead) was a success story of turning, as lovely and youthful as she had been while still mortal, and Krolock was sharp-faced and haggard, with a vague look of premature age about him no matter how much he imbibed to renew himself. This was a consequence of having been mortal until a little past fifty, with a scholarly and melancholy lifetime behind him that had drained much of the vigor away from him before the years had had very long to do so on their own. 

He _did_ bear Sarah some affection, but it was rather hard to tell most of the time.

He _had_ loved long before Sarah. It was love- and a rather clinging, desperate love at that- that had lead to his turning in the first place. If Sarah’s rise as his undead consort in 1913 had been unexpected, it was even moreso two hundred and ninety-nine years earlier, when Johannes von Krolock married Isabella Giordano.

Isabella was the plump younger daughter of a Swiss merchant, with incongruously brown lashes and brows to go with her golden hair and crooked teeth in her smile. She was a little too good with money for her own good; her fine dresses, walking advertisements of her father’s imports, were carefully darned below the surface by Isabella’s own needle to conceal their overuse. She had a good memory for matters of fashion and a bad one for the notes she was supposed to play on the clavier to impress the lord of Schloss von Krolock when her father came peddling, and her understanding of philosophy was next to nil. She _did_ , however, have a keen interest in the history of the area, and where the Krolock line stood in relation to the previous century’s war with the Turk.

And Johannes, solitary, aging Johannes, already something of a withdrawn character, with his deformed hands and black hair now turned almost entirely to iron grey and no understanding of how romance was meant to function, having ignored it all his life in favor of the relative safety of science and reason, was at a complete loss. He answered Isabella’s questions (they were relatively new money, a family in the service of the Holy Roman Emperor who’d been given a few patches of land in Transylvania as a well-intentioned but dubious reward) in a kind of startled daze that she even cared this much.

A snowstorm kept Isabella and her father at the castle for longer than planned, and Isabella’s frank, endearing interest in speaking with Johannes put him in a position he had never expected to be in- a dreadful halfway point between wanting her very badly and fear that he was misinterpreting everything.

This lasted right up until in the middle of a walk through the late afternoon thaw, when Isabella stopped walking, rubbed her thumb across his right hand, and leaned to kiss him square on the lips.

It had been years since Johannes had entertained a harlot from one of the villages in his domain, but he hadn’t forgotten what it was like to take a woman to bed. It was only when Isabella leaned over his chest and kissed him again, across his slack mouth, over the joints of his distended hands, across the hollows of his raddled collarbones, that he realized what they had done. Not to mention what her father would say.

They announced their engagement over dinner, to be safe. Isabella stayed behind when her father left.

She quickened around five months after their marriage, which reassured them regarding this decision.

Two weeks later, Isabella suffered a rapid sequence of cramps. After three hours of this, she took to her bed and was delivered of an underdeveloped, blue would-be baby.

Johannes hesitantly explained to her that his blood was faulty- his family was tainted through his mother’s side. The Krolock line had intermingled with the daughters of distantly foreign nobles and local _boyar_ for the last century, but his mother’s had too much Habsburg and not enough else, and this had lead to certain alternating peculiarities in their branch of the bloodline. Johannes was one of the lucky ones. His punishment was physical, limited to the extra joint on each of his already arthritic fingers. His mother, on the other hand, had delivered him at 17 and had to be confined for her insanity by 20. She slit her throat with a piece of broken glass at thirty, in a period of lucidity. Johannes’ father followed a year later, from sheer grief and loss of appetite. Johannes was only 14 when he succeeded to the title of Graf, and had decided then to never marry. Perhaps the lost baby was a sign from God that they would be spared the punishment of his blood any further if they accepted a barren home.

Isabella, however, was difficult to refuse, and within another year Johannes was leaning over the cradle of an impossibly small, impossibly blond baby boy they christened Herbert after the previous Graf.  
When Herbert was a year old, the family sat for a portrait together. The results were rather amusing to Isabelle- herself, pink and with an extra dose of plumpness from her pregnancy now, their tiny son already grinning eagerly at the painter with his nearly toothless mouth in a little pink o, and Johannes, who couldn’t look relaxed if someone paid him to do so. Herbert was beginning to communicate through a rich vocabulary of squeaks and nonsense syllables, and did so at nearly anyone who would pay him enough attention. The initial concerns Johannes had felt about being half a century his son’s elder began to fade, and Isabella noticed, with pride.

That autumn, Isabella fell ill.

It was a long sickness, striking suddenly but lingering and working its further damage to Isabella’s body as though she were a prey to be savored. Herbert’s second birthday came and went with Isabella unable to even see him for fear of infecting him. Johannes’ time with his wife was limited as well, but he described to her as well as he could the way the boy had clearly come to inherit what would become his own long face and square jaw, his nose, but Isabella’s fair hair and dark brows and lashes and almond-shaped eyes had prevailed. Isabella smiled and said that she hoped she would be able to see him soon.

Johannes decided that he would ensure she would, the cost be damned.

For all that Krolock family history was simple and straightforward, Johannes knew the history of the earlier lord of the district, and where to find him, and what to ask of him. The lord had lost his own wife- a suicide like Johannes’ mother- surely he would understand?

Johannes rode off to the lord’s current abode to seek a cure for Isabella.

The lord listened to Johannes’ explanation with a composed expression, stroking his thin beard, before agreeing to assist. After all, to lose the woman one loved...

The ceremony was performed, and Johannes was left to recover.

The lord’s three women came to Johannes that night. He was not yet totally changed, leaving them free to exert their will over him, and in his mind each of them was Isabella, beautiful and healthy again. The lord gave the women a child to feed upon, and Johannes saw only Isabella kissing Herbert with joy while Herbert embraced her back.  
It was three days before the reverie was broken. Johannes was suddenly aware, as though waking, of the lord’s three women lying across his bed in lazy pleasure and the bloodless, fly-covered remains of a mutilated infant against the wall.

And Isabella was still miles away.

He cursed his host and his whores and fled back to Schloss von Krolock, where his steward informed him that Isabella was passing in and out of a swoon most of the time now, and that a priest had already given her her last rites.

Herbert peered through a crack in the door and called out “Papa-“ before his nurse came and scooped him up with a shush and a worried look back at her employer, who looked even more pale and drawn than usual.

Johannes gave a quick series of orders- Isabella was to be conveyed outside at once, to the clearing where she had first kissed him, regardless of the doctor’s protests. He had to make sure she knew why he had made this decision. It had to seem like the act of love it truly was- she needed to understand why he was doing this-

And in the glow before sunrise of a late summer morning, Isabella smiled weakly at Johannes from a little pallet laid down for her in the grass and reached for his hand.

He brought her hand to his lips and realized he could feel the flutter of her heartbeat in her wrist more acutely than ever before. He told her he loved her. He told her he would save her.

And Isabella von Krolock watched her husband open his mouth wide enough to allow his eyeteeth to extend of their own accord like a snake’s, and began to scream.

She didn’t stop screaming when he drove his teeth into her throat, at least not right away. She shoved at him with her weak fists and shook violently, but he didn’t let her go, not even when her voice suddenly dried out into a choked rasp and stopped, or when her eyes suddenly froze open.

It was only when Isabella’s body was limp in his arms, with nearly half of her blood still remaining in her body, that Johannes stopped.

He leaned back, very slowly. Isabella’s blood covered his mouth and chin, dribbled down over his clothes in sticky rivulets. But the pulse in her wrist was gone.

And so, Johannes realized, was Isabella.

The wind shook the grass around them as though nothing had changed. Isabella’s body started sightlessly up at the sky.

Johannes slowly, slowly raised a hand to his own mouth. He felt the teeth pushing themselves over his lips at the corners. He moved his shaking fingertips over his bloodied chin and throat. He touched his own jugular vein.

His heartbeat, too, was gone.

And Johannes dropped Isabella’s body and began to weep.

***

 

It was a few days before Johannes even seemed to remember he had a son. He was in the process of ensuring Isabella would go unspoiled for eternity- if he could not have her with him, he could at least look at her- when Herbert’s nurse finally approached him and explained that the boy had been crying off and on for his papa since Johannes’ return.

Johannes hesitated, remembering the three women and the dead baby, but consented to allow her to bring him in.

The nurse was a slim young widow whose husband and children had been carried off by the plague. Her plain black gown and veil made her look like a particularly gloomy Madonna when she reentered with an armful of plump blond toddler in blue.

Herbert reached for his father as though nothing had changed, and- fearful though he was- Johannes took him in his arms. Herbert cast his arms around his neck and hugged, and Johannes knew in that moment that there was nothing in the world- not even his hunger- that could make him want to hurt his boy.

Herbert’s nurse watched proudly from near the doorway, adjusting the stiff collar of her dress.  
Johannes noticed.

The next day, Herbert was informed that Nurse wouldn’t be coming back. Johannes distracted him by allowing him to watch a small bonfire a little distance from the castle from his bedroom window.

***

By the time Herbert was five, Johannes had already decided to have him breeched. The boy was already quite long-limbed and fond of climbing on things, and if he couldn’t be deterred from this, he at least could be allowed the safety of doing it in trousers.

Thankfully, it was during one of Herbert’s writing lessons that he had his first fit.

Had it not been for the last few years’ ban on priests in the castle, his tutor insisted, one would have been fetched immediately. Johannes arrived to find Herbert’s little body bent backward, his lips moving soundlessly and his hands grasping slowly and tightly at the air while he stared at nothing at all.

Much like his grandmother once had.

Johannes picked him up and silently stormed out.

The fits increased in severity over time. When Herbert was seven, Johannes sentenced one of the members of his rapidly-expanding coven to death by sunrise for some minor infraction to free up a casket, which was promptly cleaned and repainted with bright and happy colors such as a child might enjoy. 

Johannes put Herbert in the casket until his thrashings ceased.

Herbert passed out of his childhood unaware of anything unusual about any of this. Johannes’ own coffin and bodily limitations suddenly made perfect sense to him. His father was simply ill as well, and retired to his coffin to treat himself.

Johannes decided this was close enough.

Occasionally, some _boyar_ or another would send Johannes a letter mentioning their nubile daughters, with a side comment that they would produce many happy non-mad heirs.

Johannes started by throwing them into the fire. Then, he reasoned, it was as good a way as any to continue acquiring forces of his own. And it wasn’t as though these young daughters of the nobility couldn’t be trotted out again if their fathers came poking around, even if they were often in their own tattered wedding dresses and looked rather grimy and sluggish when they came to greet their families.  
(Unlike his maker, Johannes had no sexual uses for any of his get. Even if he _had_ had them before the ‘get’ aspect was finalized.)

Herbert was fourteen when he asked to be allowed to go to a real school with other boys.

“You can’t climb on school buildings.”  
“I know.”  
“They’ll cut your hair.”  
“I can grow it again when I’m done, Vati.”  
“They might chain you down when you have your fits.”  
“I like being mad,” Herbert said cheerfully. “It makes people a little afraid of me.”

Johannes smiled, a little ruefully. He had yet to tell Herbert that the fits were only likely to get worse. But, like his mother, Herbert was hard to say no to.

Having the boy out of the house for a while ended up being valuable time for Johannes to work on consolidating his power. He managed to attract a few of his kind much older than he was, but substantially weaker, to his crypt, and even if the miserable creatures mostly slept and grew moldier with time, they comprised a decent backup army if one were needed.

Herbert wrote frequently and returned home over the winter, when the school’s students were allowed to see their families for a month, growing ganglier and longer-faced in spurts. He had already developed something of a vain streak that paid no attention to the way his face had begun to move slightly out of proportion. This fact which was not aided by his pale hair being shorn down to fluff for purposes of dormitory cleanliness, but there were hints of adult good looks beginning to emerge here and there. 

It was a pity, Johannes considered, that he would probably not be lucid enough to enjoy those when he was old enough to have them.

Midway through Herbert’s second year, Johannes received a letter stating that Herbert needed to be collected at once and would not be allowed to return.

Johannes arrived a week after receiving it and found his son looking sheepish in clothes he had plainly not been allowed to change any time recently.

The dean explained on no uncertain terms that Herbert had been caught red-handed, as it were, with a prince’s son who would remain unnamed so as to preserve the family virtue, engaging in some kind of clumsy schoolboy approximation of sodomy.  
“I imagine that’s rather new in a boy’s school and all,” Herbert added cheekily.

The headmaster turned and struck Herbert square in the face.

Johannes’ mouth stiffened.

A few minutes later, Johannes and Herbert were looking out the window of the school and into the river below, watching as the headmaster’s body vanished below the tide.

“It wasn’t the sodomy,” Johannes muttered. “It was any excuse he could come up with to wash his hands of your fits.”  
“Actually,” said Herbert, “sodomy _was_ involved.”

Johannes looked at him.

“Ah,” he said.

Herbert smiled winningly.

Johannes looked back at the water.

 

***

 

Herbert was eighteen the next time he left home. He was nearly six foot three by this point- an inch above his father- and still growing, a fact that caused Johannes some quiet alarm. Certain distant relatives on his mother’s side had had problems with their bones continuing to grow and thicken for far too long until they were disfigured and riddled with pain, but so far, at least, Herbert’s features had taken on a good shape. Were it not for his height and the width of his shoulders, his face could have passed for a strong-featured girl’s, but the contrast between his face and body didn’t seem to put off any potential admirers among his father’s little flock. Or the local peasants, for that matter. He had a graceful, strutting way of walking by now, a delicate complexion with flushed cheeks he protected with a vizard while riding and with any of a large collection of wide-brimmed hats when he ventured into the sun, and seemed to be able to have the last word on everything. He hadn’t cut his hair short again since his expulsion from school, and it hung in well-tended ripples down his back, the same shade his mother’s had been.

Herbert wrote home even more often than he had from school. He soon found himself in school again, in Vienna, which ended up involving asking for money, which Johannes provided in happy abundance. He still had peasants paying their taxes and could provide anything Herbert desired, though- perhaps impressively- Herbert found ways of accumulating money all on his own. The boy had an unexpected skill for _ventiuna_ , as he happily reported in his letters, and had devised a way of keeping track in his head of which cards were in play. It wasn’t _cheating_ , he insisted, just being smarter than the others, and it kept him in fine clothes at any rate. Johannes was quietly relieved that he preferred dolling himself up to spending too many nights in brothels and getting himself sick- the last thing Herbert needed was something that would hasten the inevitable- though more and more of the boy’s letters mentioned various classmates, or their sisters, with alarming tenderness and even more alarmingly frequent changes in roster.

When Herbert was a little past eighteen, he wrote home announcing that he had decided to marry some wretched girl named Caroline, whom he had managed to get in a bad way. Caroline had the advantage, according to Herbert’s letter, of having a brother named Rudolf, six minutes her elder, whose company Herbert had also enjoyed. “It will be like marrying them both at once,” Herbert reasoned. The extent to which Herbert viewed them as separate individuals seemed to be dubious anyway; he said that if Caroline were to curl her hair to look like Rudolf’s wig and put on a pair of trousers they would be more or less indistinguishable.

Johannes departed for Vienna within an hour of reading the letter.

When he arrived, he found that Herbert was already keeping household with the twins, along with a maid named Gretchen whom Caroline had brought from her family’s house. Rudolf shared Herbert’s inclination toward gambling but apparently lacked his skill, and had managed to ruin his father’s estate within two years of inheriting it. 

When Gretchen brought Johannes into the parlor, Caroline sat with her eyes downcast huddled against Herbert’s side but not under his arm, belly softly protruding under her loose stays, while Rudolf sat with his arms crossed and his legs apart by the fireplace. Herbert’s judgment that the twins were more or less interchangeable except for their sex was dubious at best, as far as Johannes could see. Their features and height were similar enough, and they had perhaps been more or less identical as children, one could surmise, but their general shared look sat far better on Caroline, who was soft-figured and pale except in her cheeks and had thick dark hair drawn up into a knot at the back of her head, with little ringlets about her face that apparently formed on their own. Rudolf would have been a similarly handsome specimen had he not been bleary-eyed and already begun to run to far less well-carried fat, and the fact that he wore about three times as much face powder as his sister, which didn’t disguise that his cheeks was extremely ruddy. His elaborately curled wig had slipped back from a closely shorn scalp that had already gone patchy.

Herbert, on the other hand, was resplendent, smiling proudly with a mouthful of straight white teeth when his father entered. Even with wigs entering into fashion, he had chosen to keep his own long hair, albeit curled at the moment, though probably with water and papers rather than tongs judging by its smoothness and shine. He did most of the talking- Caroline’s participation was limited to an occasional nervous laugh or a “Yes, sir” or “No, sir”, while Rudolf had a habit of coughing thickly and blustering before he managed to answer anything. 

Johannes noticed Rudolf’s hands were powdered, too. It didn’t quite conceal a large black sore on the back of his right.

Johannes pulled Herbert aside as soon as it was possible.

“What are you _thinking_?” he hissed. Herbert had grown another two inches or so since Johannes had last seen him, and he now had to look up at him.  
“We’re not wanting for money,” Herbert said. “And I can’t just throw her away- she’s a _lady_ , after all. Isn’t that why you married Mama, anyway-“

Johannes touched his own temple. 

“Yes,” he said, “but your mother, may she rest in peace-“

_Unlike me._

“-didn’t come in a package with some kind of dissolute parasite-“  
“Rudolf has only been _unlucky_ , Vati. And we’re not very different, he and I.” Herbert pressed his hands together in mock piety. “There but for the grace of God go I, as they say.”  
“Did he come to you first?” Johannes countered. “Or was it his sister?”  
“It was Caroline,” Herbert said airily. “Why? I have money enough for both of them.”  
“As he’s probably noticed,” Johannes said darkly. “And what about the child? How do you expect to manage that?”

Herbert shrugged.

“I suppose I’ll have to find a nurse,” he said, rather thoughtlessly. “They’re not hard to come by.”  
“Herbert,” Johannes said sharply. “Do you have _any_ intention of intervening in the child’s life?”

Herbert only shrugged again.

“Are your fits worsening?” Johannes asked.  
“No worse than before,” Herbert said sourly.  
“What about their frequency?”

This time there was no response at all.

Johannes pressed his thin lips together very tightly for a moment, then gestured at a chair.

“Sit down.”  
“What?” Herbert sounded affronted. “Vati, I am not a _child_ anymore, in case you haven’t-“  
“Sit _down_.”

Herbert’s eyes widened, the effect of which had a rather startling impact on the look of his whole face when they were usually so heavily shadowed by his lashes or scrunched up with pleasure. They were almost colorlessly gray, making even his dilated pupils look stark. He scuttled over to the chair without further argument.

Johannes settled into the chair opposite him.

“Herbert,” he said, very seriously.  
“Yes?”

Johannes hesitated. He had never wanted to tell his son what he was about to, but he had not yet lost his entire ability to feel pity, and if anyone deserved it at this juncture it was Caroline.

“Herbert,” he said. “You’re going mad.”  
“Why, for marrying Caroline?” Herbert retorted.  
“No. I mean that your fits will only grow worse with time. Your grandmother- my mother- was the same.”

He couldn’t meet Herbert’s eyes.

“Regardless of how true or untrue your feelings toward the girl may be, you have perhaps two or three years left of your life before you are lost to the outside world. That will inevitably place her- and the child- back in her brother’s care. I will not have _that boy_ sucking on the family fortune like some kind of leech.”

Herbert cast his father a rather dark look, though Johannes’ expression reassured him that the irony was not lost upon him.

“She’ll be ruined if we don’t,” Herbert protested.  
“There are ways of taking care of these things,” Johannes said.  
“What, a _doctor_ -“ Herbert began in horror, but Johannes raised a hand to silence him and said, “No. There are convents that will take care of her until the child comes. Perhaps after, if she so chooses. If she prefers her liberty, I can arrange for her to receive a regular pension from me, somewhere without her brother’s knowledge.”

He smiled grimly.

“We can call her your widow.”

Herbert stared at him.

“Of course,” Johannes continued, “that’s assuming the child survives. Even if it does, it will probably be marked in some way. That’s another part of our happy inheritance, boy.”

He began to laugh grimly, lifting one of his elongated hands and flexing the fingers to make his meaning as clear as possible.

Herbert’s mouth had begun to tremble, but he quickly covered it with his own hand- long, and very white, but with only the requisite amount of joints- as he realized that no, he was considerably more marked than his father, even if it showed less.

“Two or three years?” he repeated from behind his fingers. “Vati- Vati, I’m _eighteen_ -“  
“I’m sorry,” said Johannes. “I... I never wanted you to know.”

Herbert looked at him and almost shouted something back, something that hadn’t fully formed in his mind yet beyond fury that he had been lied to for so long- a lie of omission, yes, but a lie all the same- but he stopped before the words had a chance to get out. 

It hurt, it hurt terribly, but it had spared him a lifetime of earlier pain. Why would his father let him believe things were better than they were except out of love?

“...I understand,” Herbert said slowly. “Thank you, Vati. Thank you...”

He rose and approached his father, who was still staring away from him. Johannes startled when Herbert wrapped his arms around him.

“Forgive me,” Johannes muttered.  
“I do,” Herbert said. “Just promise me you won’t throw me in a madhouse when I’m gone? You’ll bring me home, won’t you?”

Johannes nodded, patting his boy’s shoulder.

“I promise.”

Herbert began to cry in earnest.

***

Herbert retired to his room when they parted, with Caroline tiptoing after him in concern at his demeanor. Rudolf and Johannes watched them go, with Rudolf taking a deep drink from a bottle of currant brandy as they did so. He had adjusted his wig back into its proper position. It didn’t help much.

The next time Johannes saw Caroline, she was pink-faced and puffy-eyed, but about as vocal as ever, which was to say, not much. She and Herbert sat on the divan about a foot and a half apart, looking listless. Rudolf smiled ingratiatingly and offered them some of his brandy, which Caroline refused with a mute shake of the head but Herbert accepted with eye-rolling enthusiasm.

“And you, milord?” Rudolf asked, casting his bleary gaze on Johannes.  
“I never drink brandy,” Johannes said grimly.  
“Suit yourself. Gretchen!”

The housemaid- a slim little thing with mousy brown hair but a pleasant enough face and a nicely formed small bosom- came darting into view in the threshold.

“Yes, Herr Strauss?” she said, midway through a low curtsey.  
“Another bottle for _the happy couple_.”  
“Yes, Herr Strauss,” she said before vanishing again.

Johannes watched her leave with some interest. He wasn’t thirsty, but he _was_ rather peckish.

The next morning, Herbert- and a very wincing, withdrawn, and bad-tempered Johannes- were awoken by the sound of Rudolf’s sobbing.

Herbert, by far the better-equipped for venturing downstairs, rushed in.

“What on earth-“

Rudolf, wigless and in a soiled nightshirt, pointed a shaking finger out the window at where Caroline was lying across on the garden path. Her limbs were at the wrong angles and her head was split, leaking a now-dried paste of her blood and her brain on the pavement.

Herbert covered his mouth and staggered back.

“Oh, God-“

There were people peering in through the garden gate. Rudolf angrily waved for them to leave.

“Get away!” he shouted, not minding that they probably couldn’t hear him through the walls of the house and across the garden. “Christ, do people have any decency- where in _God’s_ name is Gretchen? _Gretchen!_ ”

The maid came staggering up the stairs from the cellars, still in her nightgown.

“What’s happened?” she asked in a hollow, rasping voice. As soon as she entered the brightly lit parlor, she stumbled back, covering her eyes with a low howl of pain.  
“Caroline’s dead,” Rudolf choked out. “Get out there and get rid of these damned _onlookers_ -“  
“Oh, do it yourself,” Gretchen snarled, turning back toward the basement.

Rudolf darted toward her, enraged, and seized her by the shoulder.

“How _dare_ you speak to me in that ma-“

Gretchen seized his hand and threw him off in one fluid motion, baring sharp white eyeteeth at him while emitting a positively inhuman growl.  
“I said, _do it yourself_ , you fat bag of entrails,” Gretchen snarled.

Rudolf stumbled back from her, too drunk to be anything but confused, while Gretchen lurched back toward the basement stairs. There came a sound of her falling down a long number of steps a few moments later, followed by a shriek of harsh laughter.

“Useless little whore,” Rudolf muttered.

Herbert had his hand pressed over his mouth and was staring out at Caroline’s body.

“She wasn’t in my room,” he kept repeating. “She wasn’t in my room...”

Abruptly, he turned and embraced Rudolf, draping himself over the smaller man’s body and setting his chin atop Rudolf’s head.

“Oh, _Rudolf_ -“

Johannes entered, looking only mildly less annoyed than Gretchen had, then outright displeased when he saw Herbert embracing Rudolf (not to mention Rudolf embracing back), then intensely sympathetic when he saw the tears flowing down Herbert’s cheeks.

Herbert pointed out the window. Johannes stepped tentatively, wincing, into the light, and peered out.

“That poor girl,” he said, without much inflection.  
“They’ll throw her in the potter’s field,” Rudolf moaned. “Gretchen! Get me some brandy-“  
“You have legs,” Gretchen cackled from the basement.

Herbert gave his father a sidelong look. Johannes spread his hands guilelessly.

***

Caroline’s body was wrapped in a shawl and carried off by the local constabulary to be placed in a common grave- as a suicide, she wasn’t permitted a Christian burial.

Johannes set off to return to the family castle about a week later, with Gretchen insisting on coming along. Herbert stayed behind with Rudolf.

“I can’t leave him now, Vati, he needs me,” Herbert said. “He just lost his _sister_ \- and I love _him_ too, you must understand-“  
“I do,” Johannes said, grim and suspicious as ever.  
“I’ll keep writing,” Herbert promised. “I’m so sorry things went this way-“  
“They were for the better, in the end,” Johannes said.

Herbert hesitated.

“I... I suppose God will understand,” he said slowly. “Even if she was a suicide.”  
“God?” Johannes scoffed. “God has nothing to do with it.”

He turned and swept off, with Herbert staring after him.

He and Gretchen were passing through the countryside when he flung her body from the carriage with a splinter of the interior molding through her heart.

Herbert initially did very well with keeping his promise of writing back, but gradually his letters became less and less frequent, and usually containing very little news beyond reassurances that he was well.

Then came a letter from someone else entirely. A doctor.

It took Johannes another week to reach Vienna, and he sucked his teeth and hoped against all hope that _this time_ , he wouldn’t be too late.

The hospital stank of blood that had gone off and gave off a permeating aura of painful holiness from the legions of little veiled nuns who crept about the place trying to offer solace to the injured and dying. Were it not for Herbert, Johannes would have turned back at the door.

One of the interchangeable little nuns led him to a bed tucked in the corner of the third floor that was surrounded by hastily strung-up sheets that acted as curtains. Johannes nodded and pushed the sheet aside.

“Hello, Vati,” Herbert said from the bed, smiling weakly.

Johannes recoiled in horror. The thing on the bed was almost unrecognizable as his son at first glance. He looked sallow and bleary-eyed and above all _old_ , with only a few thin hanks of the hair he had been so proud of clinging to his scalp and the rest mostly settled on the pillow. His hands were swollen and red, the creases of his knuckles looking like seams, his lips were cracked, and his torso was swathed in discolored bandages spotted with yellow, red, brown.

“...Herbert,” Johannes gasped.  
“It’s pretty terrible, isn’t it,” Herbert wheezed, grinning.  
“What has happened to you?” Johannes said, coming to his side and taking one of Herbert’s thickly swollen hands.

Herbert laughed, then winced, then laughed at his own wincing.

“Rudolf did a very nasty thing, Vati,” he said lightly. “Rudolf was a very nasty _boy_ , you see.”

Johannes had to literally bite his tongue to keep from snarling that he knew it.

“I went to fight for him against some other boy- Christ, I can’t even remember his name, Vati,” Herbert said, his voice soft and distant. “And I won! I always win. But Rudolf came up and he ran me right through. He used a poisoned sword.”

He sighed dreamily.

“I didn’t know people really did that, Vati, did you?”

Herbert’s lips kept moving a moment after he finished speaking. He laughed a little.

“I’m so full of poison, Vati... or I think I was. I’m all empty now. The bandages are all that’s keeping me from falling to pieces, you know...”  
“Herbert,” Johannes said, rubbing his hand. It was all he _could_ say, really.

Herbert laughed.

“I’m very ugly now, aren’t I, Vati?” he said in a brittle, giggling voice. “They won’t let me have a mirror to see myself with. I know what that means. I can feel I haven’t got any hair now, Vati. Isn’t that funny?”

Johannes just stared at his son, fighting back tears for the first time since Isabella had died. It was painfully obvious that the infection had gone to Herbert’s brain- he was blinking too much, smacking his lips between sentences, and that _laugh_ , that damned _laugh_... There was no way Herbert was in his right mind. His proud, vain son would have despaired at the state he was in if he _knew_.

 

“...you look fine, Herbert,” Johannes said softly.  
“Oh, no I don’t!” Herbert said in a sing-song intonation, like Mr. Punch without the quack. He started coughing, and his face suddenly crumpled with pain.

“Oh- oh, Vati, it _hurts_ -“  
“Sssh,” Johannes said gently. “I’m here...”  
“He _hated_ me, Vati,” Herbert said, staring at the ceiling. “Do you know why?”

Herbert slowly turned to grin at him.

“He didn’t want to share Caroline with me.”

Johannes’ stomach dropped, a rare feat in itself. Herbert lolled his head back up to look at the ceiling.

“I don’t even know if it was _my_ baby, Vati. He was so _wretched_ to her- I think she jumped from _his_ window. He’d find her, you know... when I was mad, he’d find her...”

Herbert closed his eyes and smiled serenely.

“But I’ll never be mad now, will I?” he said, in a whisper. “And that awful Rudolf has killed both of us...”

Johannes held his hand and gingerly stroked what remained of Herbert’s hair. Herbert exhaled gently, his breath foul from the infection, but then his brow creased.

“Oh- oh _Vati_ ,” he whimpered. “Vati-“  
“I’m here,” Johannes said soothingly.  
“I’m _scared_ , Vati,” Herbert murmured, sounding for all the world like the child he’d once been. “Oh, _God_ -“

He opened his eyes and rheumy tears poured out.

“Oh, _God_ , Vati, I don’t want to die- I don’t want to know what God will say to me-“  
“He won’t be there,” Johannes said, rubbing away Herbert’s tears with his thumb. “There is no God, Herbert. If there ever was, he died long ago.”  
“Do you really think so?” Herbert asked in a small, hopeful voice.  
“I promise you,” Johannes said.

This seemed to momentarily soothe Herbert, but a moment later he began to cry again.

“I don’t want to die, Vati,” he said, in a low croak of a voice. “I don’t want to die-“  
“It’s all right, Herbert.”  
“No, it’s not!” Herbert said.

He pushed himself up on the pillow, wincing against the pain but going onward anyway.

“How can you just sit there and say that when I know you can help me?” he sobbed. “Do you _want_ me to die?“  
“Herbert-“  
“Well, do you?” Herbert said. 

Johannes hesitated again.

“...Herbert,” he said, “look at yourself-“  
“So I _am_ very ugly,” Herbert said gloomily.  
“If I turned you,” Johannes said cautiously, “you might look like this forever. Is that something you would want?”  
“Your coven are uglier,” Herbert said, with what he probably intended as a smirk.

Right now, Herbert looked only marginally better than the worst of them, but Johannes kept his mouth shut.

“...you might be crippled,” Johannes said desperately.  
“I already was,” Herbert said, tapping his temple with a shaking, swollen finger. “Now my body will match my head...”

Johannes shook his head.

“Herbert, _no_ -“  
“Please, Vati?” Herbert said, looking at him as steadily as he could.

That was the instant where Johannes’ heart broke.

Herbert, like Isabella before him, was very hard to refuse.

Johannes pressed his lips together and nodded- first slowly, and then quickly, as though it were his own life on the line, gesturing feebly for Herbert to turn his head to the side.

“Thank you, Vati,” Herbert murmured.

Johannes released Herbert’s hands, leaned over him, and bit.

It was hard not to gag- Herbert’s blood tasted foul, the usual coppery tang almost completely covered up by the rot of the poison. Herbert didn’t react except for the natural and uncontrollable shaking that went with the shock of blood loss, and allowed Johannes to drain him completely.

When there was nothing left, Johannes rushed to the bedpan in the corner and vomited up what he’d taken from his son, violently. 

Wiping his chin, he looked at Herbert’s poor drained form on the bed. The boy was now some four or five inches taller than him, and quite a bit broader, but Johannes was able to scoop him up and carry him out of the hospital on his own. ignoring the protests of onlooking nuns.

He brought Herbert’s body to the inn where he was staying, tenderly laid him in bed, and exhausted, fell asleep in the chair beside him.

A few hours later, he awoke to the smell of blood.

Johannes sat up, blinking.

The bed was empty.

“Herbert-“

He looked around. Herbert was nowhere in sight.

“ _Herbert_ -“  
“I’m in here, you silly old woman,” Herbert called from the attached washroom.

So it had worked. Johannes rushed to the doorway of the bathroom, reminding himself not to gasp or shudder- there was no way Herbert wasn’t wretchedly disfigured now-

He stopped.

Herbert, intact and pale-skinned except a thick mass of scars that coated his torso, front and back, was crouched on the ground, clutching a headless rat. His hair had already grown back, long and shining as before, but white, all except for the few blond sections that had clung to his head throughout his infection. He had the rat’s headless body pressed to his pale pink lips and was sucking out anything and everything that came out of the wound.

He noticed his father staring at him and grinned. His teeth were blood-rimmed.

“You see?” he said. “You didn’t need to worry, Vati. Here I am.”

***

Johannes spent the first few weeks afterward in Vienna, tending to Herbert. The boy was easily coaxed back into his clothes, but it was much harder going to remind him that his nightshirt was an insufficient cover. Johannes found himself acting as much as Herbert’s caretaker as he was his father and mentor in undeath. 

It was only the shock. It had to be the shock. Herbert still looked like himself, except for his white hair, and that was better than usually became of Johannes’ new get, especially for someone who had been in the condition Herbert had died in. 

Hunting was out of the question for the time being. Human blood wasn’t essential, and the cattle alternative was easily obtainable from a butchers’. Herbert’s farsightedness was worse in daylight, and this meant that the first time he tried to sip the cattle blood from a wineglass he had trouble getting it to his mouth at all, ruining one of his favorite suits in the process and being extremely put out by this.

“Are we going to live in this miserable little garret from now on?” he moaned as he pulled a clean shirt over his head.  
“No,” said Johannes. “When you’re ready, we’ll be going back home.”  
“And what then?” Herbert asked.

Johannes stepped forward and helped Herbert finish closing his shirt over his scar-riddled body in silence.

“And _then_ what?” Herbert asked again.  
“We’ll work on that when we get there,” Johannes grumbled.  
“I’m _bored_ here,” Herbert moaned. “I’m so tired of hiding in this Godforsaken little hole. Everyone thinks I’m dead-“  
“You _are_ dead.”

Herbert blinked a few times as he processed this. Then he grinned.

“Oh, I am, aren’t I?” he said, with a low laugh.  
“That’s not an invitation to be foolish,” Johannes cautioned him. He added, more sternly than he really felt, “I didn’t save you so you could go running off and getting yourself staked at the first opportunity-“

Herbert rolled his eyes, allowing his whole head to roll with them.

“You’re so much _fussier_ than you were before, Vati,” he said, his forehead creasing like a piece of white waxed paper as he frowned. “It’s not very becoming.”

Johannes gave him a frown of his own in return. Herbert’s frown intensified before he burst into peals of laughter from the strain.

“I’ll be careful, I promise.”

He held up his hand in a sign of benediction, fangs popping over his lower lip as he grinned.

Johannes was not reassured.

Rudolf Strauss, meanwhile, had latched onto the young Prince Morgenstern for what he hoped would be a good long while, though he didn’t appreciate the comparable secrecy with which his relationship with someone of the Prince’s standing had to be conducted. It felt unpleasantly like being reduced to some kind of... male mistress, one supposed, though if he were honest with himself, a mistress in condition analogous to his would have probably been dropped like a sack of flour by now. 

But Herbert von Krolock was dead, and Rudolf’s conscience was none the worse for it. This made it rather perplexing when he happened to glance out of his hired carriage on his way home from the Prince’s and saw someone in the crowd who looked uncommonly like Herbert von Krolock sitting outside of a tavern window, white-haired and white-skinned and wrapped in a long white cloak.

Rudolf stared at this someone for a long moment, and the someone looked back at him, and smiled in a way rather that was both too reminiscent of Herbert von Krolock and yet somehow almost beastlike. 

The someone opened his mouth and licked very pale lips with a very red tongue, before turning and retreating into the tavern.

Rudolf shook his head and thought no more of it. Within a few days, he had forgotten it entirely.

Since Gretchen had gone off with Herbert’s father, Rudolf had been unable to keep a maid, and this was an amenity that the Prince refused to finance. Rudolf was forced into the irritating position of having to do his own marketing if he expected to be fed. He disliked having to deal with grocers and butchers and their ilk, and was haggling over the price of a piece of pork when he saw, in the background, the same blanched impression of Herbert von Krolock, standing immaculate on the slaughter floor and giving the butcher’s boy a small handful of coins in exchange for a covered bucket.

This time there was no mistake. Rudolf hurried out without his pork.

A few days later, the young Prince Morgenstern received a fine white cloak from an anonymous admirer.

Rudolf, meanwhile, was beginning to wonder if the pox had finally made its way to his brain. There was hardly a place he could go without seeing Herbert’s face and figure leering at him in the distance, death-pale and always with the same ghastly red grin. He _knew_ Herbert was dead- it had been reported with some reliability- and in any case, he certainly had been far from as intact as these visions seemed to be. 

Rudolf assured himself that there was nothing to fear. If this was his conscience, he could overcome it. He had an attachment to the Prince to consider, and a possible government position in the future if he played his cards right.

However, when Rudolf returned home late one evening, he saw a white-cloaked figure standing in the darkness by his mantel.

Something within Rudolf Strauss hit its breaking point. He pulled his dagger from its sheath on his belt and rushed at the intruder, screaming pleas for it to just _die_ already and plunging his dagger into its back again and again-

When the disarmingly solid figure was felled, Rudolf turned it over, expecting to triumphantly stare down into the face of the now twice-murdered Herbert von Krolock, and instead met the glassy stare of Prince Morgenstern.  
Rudolf stared at his blood-covered hands, at the splashes on his clothes in the candlelight. His heartbeat began to pound so heavily he felt it would crack his ribs and burst from his chest. He looked toward the window as if expecting to see the judgment of God bearing down on him.

And instead, all he saw was the red, grinning, triumphant mouth of Herbert von Krolock at the window, set in his white, white face.

***

 

Rudolf Strauss was hanged at midday. Herbert begged and pleaded to be allowed to attend the execution, but as far as Johannes was concerned, this latest misadventure had already put Herbert too close to the proverbial stake far too many times, and they would return to their homestead together as soon as possible.

Herbert swept into the castle on his return like a conquering prince, with the flock bowing and scraping to both father and son. Johannes, on the other hand, was profoundly weary.

Herbert’s grace had become affected; he took long, slow strides with his cloak held about him, but he stumbled too easily and reacted with slack-jawed, heavily blinking shock the moment he hit the ground. Even the flock usually caught themselves with a jerking motion halfway down, or clung to the wall, but Herbert’s reflexes were now spastic at best. When none of the flock were looking, he dragged himself up the stairs on all fours.

Johannes watched him with concern and began excusing himself from his adoring flock, leaving the driver who had brought himself and Herbert back to the castle and the carriage mule behind to slake the revenants’ thirst. One of them tore his cloak from his shoulders as he hurried up the stairs.

Herbert was on the ground in the hallway, clutching his head. Johannes rushed to his side.

“Herbert-“  
“I’m all right, Vati,” he said, smiling and smoothing his fluttering hands over his hair. “You fussy old woman!”

He tilted his head like a bird and grinned so hard his eyes vanished behind his lashes. Johannes grit his teeth and pulled Herbert up to his feet.

“We’re almost to your room- it’s all right-“

Johannes hadn’t felt truly sick in years. He was beginning to now.

He lead Herbert into his old bedroom, gesturing around at the familiar furnishings.

“Here,” he said. “Do you see it? It’s your old room.”

Herbert looked around, giving his eyes a moment to adjust, and then clasped his hands under his chin.

“Oh- oh, Vati, so it is-“

He did a sort of skittering little run forward that ended with a tight turn, his arms clenched happily over his own body, and looked back at his father.

Herbert was beaming with guileless, familiar joy, and for a moment Johannes believed that everything would be all right again.

“...you should rest,” he said. “I’ll have a coffin ordered for you within the week, and you’ll have your place in the crypt beside me. For now, though, use your bed.”

Herbert shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No, I’m going to take a bath...”  
“Whatever you’d like,” Johannes said.

Herbert looked around himself again, taking in his familiar surroundings with approval, then glancing at his father.

“Well?” said Herbert. “Shoo!”

Johannes chuckled and stepped outside, drawing the door shut behind him.

He was almost down the hall when he heard the scream and the crash.

Johannes threw open the door to Herbert’s room again and rushed in. He found Herbert in the bathroom, looking petrified. Herbert had torn up a heavy floor tile and was repeatedly throwing it at the mirrors lining the walls.  
Johannes seized his son and pulled him back. Herbert thrashed and howled, but Johannes didn’t release him.

“Herbert- Herbert, what are you-“  
“I can’t _see_ myself!” Herbert wailed, pointing accusingly at the empty, cracked mirrors. “Look, Vati- _where am I_...“

***

It was a long time before Herbert was settled and asleep in bed.

Johannes sat beside him with a stake in his hand for hours, lifting it slowly and then lowering it back against the bed just as slowly. Eventually, it grew too much for him to take, and he left.

It had only been seventeen years since Isabella’s death, and already Johannes found himself pausing in front of the family portrait they had posed for before she had fallen ill. It was difficult to believe now that any of them had ever been quite so innocent and full of life. Isabella lay under glass in a deconsecrated chapel on the grounds, full of sawdust and coated in wax, Herbert was a ruin of everything he should have been able to be, and Johannes...

It was no longer clear to Johannes himself if he had really changed at all.

There was only one piece of evidence still in existence that Johannes himself had ever been young- a portrait of himself at perhaps twenty-five or so, barely eighteen inches tall. It was dwarfed by a life-size canvas of Herbert at sixteen, fresh-complexioned and laughing, with his hair falling to his shoulders in gleaming blond waves that bore only a passing resemblance to the straw-straight white hair he had now. Johannes, on the other hand, was already recognizable and relatively unchanged.

Perhaps this was always how it had to be. Perhaps this was the final manifestation of his family’s eventual ruin. 

Blood will out.

***

Years went by.

Herbert never did recover fully. He regained his spirits eventually, and went off on occasional travels, upon which he tried to make money the way he had before, but he soon realized he no longer had much of a knack for memorizing cards and points and wound up exploiting his inability to die by normal means for fun and profit. It was easy to win drinking games this way, and even easier to win if the drink had something poisonous in it. His opponents died in agony, and Herbert collected and disappeared.

Eventually, someone caught wise and tried to track him down, and this time, Herbert returned to the castle visibly ill and shaken once again. Johannes would brook no argument; Herbert was too ill to go outside any longer.

Occasionally, Johannes sat beside Isabella’s mannequin of a corpse and tried to apologize for what he had done to her son. 

He brought Herbert cattle blood procured from the village nearby, and occasionally a traveler to feed on. This kept Herbert sustained despite his inability to hunt.

It was the least he could do for Isabella’s memory. It was beginning to fade otherwise.

He took other lovers, in brief spates. There was a pastor’s daughter for a few months in 1730, who allowed Johannes to feed from little incisions she made herself in her skin. He would trail his fingertip down from the cut, smearing a line of blood on her skin, and formed it into some pretty word or another. She smiled and kissed him, and for a brief time, he was happy, until her little gifts were no longer enough and she lay glassy and drained against the mattress of her little wooden bed.

She came limping to the castle a few days later, her pretty blue dress all in tatters, face sunburnt and distorted. Johannes shuddered looking at her and abandoned her to the graveyard with the others.

Some seventy-five or so years later, he acquired both one of Napoleon’s pages and his sweetheart. By this time, Johannes had no room left for pity and ignored the boy’s pleas for mercy. To the crypt with both of them.

It was only him and Herbert now. He sometimes wondered what Isabella’s voice had sounded like.

Johannes was nearly three hundred years old when he observed a newcomer to the village in the foothills below the castle. She was apparently a young bride-to-be of about twenty-five, with great dark eyes and a long mass of wavy dark hair that struggled against staying under her modest little cap, a delicate figure and a decided stubbornness of purpose about her that he found incredibly appealing.

Her name was Rebecca. Her parents in her home village had engaged her to the local innkeeper’s son.

Clearly, this was a matter that required some speed. Johannes waited outside the inn, sick with longing, waiting for a moment in which he could catch Rebecca alone and offer her a way out of the life she’d been sold into.

When the moment came, Rebecca promptly smacked him with a large stick of salami and began calling for her fiancé.

(Herbert found this terribly amusing when he found out.) 

Rebecca went right along with her prescribed destiny and married Yoine Chagal, who inherited the inn a few months afterward, and in due course lost everything that had appealed to Johannes about her except her stubbornness. She had a fairly similar effect on her husband, but this didn’t prevent her from becoming pregnant a few years into their marriage.

The child was a girl. Her parents named her Sarah.

Johannes bided his time.

Of course, by the time Sarah had grown, there were complications. Some doddering old professor who fancied himself an expert on exterminating Johannes’ kind came traipsing into town, dragging with him a slack-jawed, nervous little twit of a student assistant whom Herbert nevertheless immediately called claim on when he saw him through the library telescope.

“We’ll see,” Johannes grumbled.

Sarah proved more amenable to temptation than her mother- who had now been fully replaced in her husband’s affections by a coarse, bosomy serving wench, who brought up vague memories of Gretchen and as such was rather low on Johannes’ list of priorities- and was easily lured to the castle by the gift of a pair of red dancing boots.

(“I told you, girls like shoes,” said Herbert.)

Sarah evoked feelings Johannes had not felt since little Rosemarie back in 1730, her soppy little would-be suitor provided a nice present for Herbert, and the self-appointed vampire expert would make either decent food for the flock or an intelligent companion to spend long nights discussing the contents of his vast library with. 

And yet, as always, Johannes gave in. Sarah’s limp, weak form crumpled at his feet evoked nothing to him but detached disgust, though not so much so that he was fine with the student and the professor trying to steal her away.

And yet...

The Sarah who returned to him was sharper. Hungry. Ruthless.

Beautiful.

For the first time in his long unlife, Johannes had a consort.

Of course, things rarely went smoothly. Even Sarah grew dull after a long enough period of time, but she had ways of fighting tooth and nail to stay on top, and Johannes admired her for it. Occasionally, it even crossed his mind that he loved her for it.

But above all else, far above Sarah, he loved Herbert.

As the middle of the twentieth century approached, Johannes had begun to put his hand in various mortal businesses in a highly removed capacity. It was more reliable than taxing peasants, and easier to hide from prying mortal authorities. As the Iron Curtain fell across Europe, Johannes bribed government officials to keep out of his domains. The idea of being a thorn in Stalin’s side was rather amusing, after all, and he kept up the habit even once the collection of leaders began shifting around.

By the late 1970s, Herbert asked if he could be allowed to see America. 

He was very hard to say no to.


End file.
